House of Sand and Secrets (3 page)

We women have gathered at the foot of a large staircase where the lady of House Ives has brought down her two daughters to greet the guests before being sent back to the nursery rooms. The older is perhaps ten, with a cool, bored look, and hair as fine and blonde as her mother’s. The smaller child is a dour little thing, furtive and sulky. I greet them as expected, annoyed already by the pretence as a gaggle of young married women coo over the girls.

They are just two more spoiled little doves, bargaining pieces. I was once the same. Even so, I can’t help the momentary pain that crosses my chest. Lady Ives has something I will never have in these two girls. I press one hand lightly against my skirt and pretend that I have never wanted children and that I do not care. After all, there’s no point in bringing more people into a world like ours, where their futures are laid out for them so neatly that one wrong step will damn them to misery.

“Makes you feel almost sorry for them,” a woman mutters behind me as the girls are led away.

I glance back. The woman is smiling. Her brunette hair is curled and pinned up so that her neck is left bare; her hazel eyes are almost amber in the fatcandle light. She has skin like fine parchment, and I can almost read the poetry waiting to be written there. My heart leaps. Nerves.

“The girls,” she says, and nods elegantly.

“I should feel sorry for them?” Careful now – this is the first time someone has spoken to me without sneering, without at least attempting to hide their desire to latch on to a new scandal.

The woman raises her small liqueur glass so the light catches it, sparking in the dark depths. “They’re never innocent. We’re never innocent,” she corrects. “Already they’re playing off each other, and trying to catch the eyes of those Mata brats.” Here she tips the glass just slightly in the direction of a group of slender, red-haired boys. “I’m Carien,” she says, “and you’re the girl who married a bat.”

I bristle at the double insult. She’s only a handful of years older than me, and Jannik is more than just an expletive. “Pelim Felicita,” I snap. I’m trawling my memory for the woman’s House. I’ve made the foolish error of memorizing the names of all the men, and not their wives’. My own fault then if I come out the worse from this encounter.

“Oh, I know your name.” She laughs and takes a sip of her drink, and shudders lightly. “Everyone does.” Carien must catch the anger that flashes through me. “Don’t take it that way.” She smiles behind her liqueur glass. “You’re the centre of all the talk, you know.”

Wonderful. I’m thrilled. And I’m an idiot.

Carien shakes her head, still laughing. “I do wish you could see the look on your face.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Come.” She holds out a gloved hand, unexpectedly. I stare at it. “Come on.” She wiggles her fingers in a strange melding of impatience and playfulness. “You should meet the others.”

Others? Now I’m intrigued. Perhaps my opening has finally come. This is the first time I have had a civil conversation with someone that lasted longer than five flicks of a nilly tail.

I don’t take her proffered hand, but I do follow her. She leads me to a small room, really more of a comforting little nook lined with leather books and warmly lit by fatcandles in coloured glass. Several small intricate glass sculptures, of the kind made by War-Singers with the talent for art and glass, are scattered about the room on low tables and shelves. They cast fantastical shapes of orange and green and blue across the spines of the books. Several women, most of them Carien’s age or a bit older, sit chattering softly. They look up when we enter. The rainbow lights dance across their faces.

“Oh, so you’ve caught her then?” says one, smiling with something that is not so much amusement as pleasure.

So I’ve walked right into the sphynx’s den, have I? Watch out, I am not unarmed. I still have my wit and my pride and my family name.

“Rescued her, actually.” Carien flops down inelegantly on one of the lush sofas that clutter the small room. “Mirian was busy showing off those spawn of hers.”

“Oh, Gris.” A woman with long fine features and long fine hair taps long fine fingers against her glass. “You know she only dragged them out because the Matas finally decided to accept an invitation. She’ll tie those girls to House Mata if it kills her.”

“Making up for her own failure,” says another. “Couldn’t catch herself a prince, so she baits the hook with her daughters.”

The women laugh together like all the bells in MallenIve striking midnight.

“And you.” The woman stops tapping her glass and turns her attention to me, her dark brown hair swinging across her face. “You should be grateful to us, you know.”

“Should I?” I say it coolly, gathering up my insecurities and snarling them tight and small.

“Oh yes.” She stands – a languid motion that fits her look. “I’m Destia, and you’ve met Carien. We’ve seen you trying to talk to our husbands.”

My cheeks heat, my breath sticks in my throat. This is mortifying. Here I thought I was going to begin making alliances, and instead they are putting me up on trial so they can mock me. “I believe I have spoken to some of them,” I say with a cool archness I do not feel.

“They won’t listen to you.” Destia smiles neatly. She has very small teeth.

“They will listen to us,” adds Carien. “We’ve been waiting for you to realize it.”

“Only you didn’t,” says another, honey blonde and dressed in scarlet.

“Carien took pity on you.”

“You should thank her.”

The air stinks of scriv. The drug is their key to their magic. They are wealthy, or they would not be so casual in its use. And they want me to know it. Perhaps there have been other rumours about me – ones that talk about how I have given up scriv, given up magic.

No one quite believes it, of course. What Lammer in their right mind would give up the only thing that truly sets them apart? It’s our very reason for being. And, if I am honest with myself, I feel its lack in my own life. Were I to start taking scriv again, I would once more be a War-singer and the highest of the magical castes, with complete control over the air. I could choke the breath right out of Carien’s lungs. She would see then I am not a little toy to be played with like a terrier does a rag-doll.

But those days are past. Power corrupts, it’s said, and I have felt that corruption chew its way through me. More than that, I have been on the receiving end of a War-singer’s magic, have been choked and belittled and discarded.

Carien’s amber eyes are on me, watching with a predatory intensity.

I hold my head very still, not wanting to seem cowed, but not wanting her to pounce either. “I’m disinclined to throw out my gratitude like grains in a hen coop.”

Instead of sputtering or demanding an apology, Carien shows me her long throat and crows. The noise is raucous and loudly out of place – a farmyard screech.

All I can do is stare. There is something very wild and unpolished beneath Carien’s House fashions and society strictures. Whatever I expected of her – this isn’t it. What kind of well-bred lady trained for House subservience and the shuffle of domesticity calls attention to herself like this? One who intrigues, who mirrors something in me that I have tried to cover like the mirror-silver in a death-house. I almost find myself stepping closer to her, as if she has wound a silk thread around us and has begun to spin us together.

After her outburst, Carien indicates that I sit down and, though I’m still crawling with misgivings, I do so. Next to me Destia smirks then sips at her drink.

When the rustling of silk, taffety, and lace has quieted, Carien crosses her hands over her knees and leans forward. “Tell us about the bat.” All the heads around me come closer, and I am reminded of jackals gathering about a wounded goat.

The bat.
I keep my face still, and imagine the things that I could do to these little jackals if I were still a War-singer. I want to lash out, to tell them his name, and explain to them that he is not an animal. But I know from their looks and from their gleeful maliciousness that this would be sport. And, frankly, I need their husbands’ business partnerships – and for that I need
them
. What Jannik doesn’t know. . . . I shudder in revulsion at what I am about to do. “It’s a political marriage–”

Carien waves me silent. “Oh we don’t want to hear the Pelim House line. We can get that from the Courant.” She leans nearer still, close enough that I can see the lamplight shine yellowly off her teeth. “Do you touch it?”

“No.” At least that is not a lie. I have. I don’t. I want to. I will not. “No, I haven’t.” Then why have I never taken scriv again? It’s not like I have consummated my marriage. It’s not as if I could poison him with the touch of my scriv-infected skin.

My answer leaves her looking disappointed and she withdraws. “Really?” She eyes an area above my head, apparently bored with me now that I have failed to give her what she wants. “How dull. Don’t you ever get curious?”

“About what?” I ask without thinking.

I have Carien’s interest again. Her smile is infuriating, a smile that says
I know something you don’t
. “I’ve heard they’re magical.”

And here I thought everyone in MallenIve had relegated the bats to nothing more than people-shaped animals or sometimes, if they were lucky, to the status of kept-whores. “Have you now?” I try to take a deep breath, but the stench of scriv is so heavy I feel like all I’m breathing in is spoiled fruit instead of air. It’s been so long since I had any that I’ve realized how awful it actually smells. The women here are rotten with it.

Carien narrows her eyes. “There’s talk.” But it seems something in my tone has warned her off, because she sits back with a sudden easy grace and looks around. “Where’s that damn servant? Ives lets the Hobs get away with murder here.”

The honey-blonde laughs. “Hardly surprising, given his predilections.”

The women all smirk together.

I take their lapse of interest in me as an opportunity to gather myself. Scriv. So much of it in this room, and there is only one type of magic that calls for such quantities in these social situations.
Readers
. Damn it. All of them? I eye the group warily.

Carien’s moments of looking not-quite at me are explained. Now that I’m aware of it, I can see how their interactions with each other are careful, with a slick layer of surface agreement that indicates heavy emotional shielding.

There is no way to be truly hidden around them. If I’d been able to go on to University, I would have learned some shielding techniques – enough that I could at least misdirect – but even that is a trick that only a few really get the knack of.

This is why we War-Singers and Saints loathe the Readers so. There is no perfect way to hide the lies, the insecurities, and the complexities of engagement. The best I can do is focus on some very strong emotion, something so powerful it will blank out all others. Very few people have something big enough to work. Love certainly isn’t enough. However, I am lucky.

Lucky. If that’s what one wants to call it. My fingers twitch, and I force myself to remember the things I did.

Dash’s face as I cut him off in a nightmare world, willing him to die. The scratch on Owen’s cheek, sentencing him to death. I ran away from my family and my future, only to destroy it. Only to end up with a future that is hardly better than the one I tried to escape. And people died for my rebellion. Dash and Owen were merely the ones whose names I knew.

These things are me. This is my guilt. And, beyond that, I have the time I wasted in not killing my brother straight away, and the innocents who died because of that.

The guilt hits me solidly and the blackness fills my throat.

Across from me Destia shifts, turning a little to stare at me in confusion.

Carien narrows her eyes, smiles grimly, and taps her fingers along the wooden arm rest of her chair. We watch each other, waiting to see who will make the next move, and what it will be. She is like a little snake, ready to strike.

They’re interested in the bats, and
that
interests me. MallenIve society detests them as vermin. It’s not the done thing to show any fascination. I need to draw these women out a little and find out what they know. If it’s true that Carien and her cronies know that the ba– the vampires are magical, then how long before they have them condemned to death, or worse, used to replace scriv dust – their teeth and bones ground to powder and snorted from little glass spoons?

It must not happen. I pull my guilt around me, let it seethe. “How do you mean magical?” I affect my best tone of bumbling confusion. “I must confess that the idea strikes me as somewhat ludicrous, certainly I–” I pause, mouth still open then shut it with a decisive snap. I flush, intensify the guilt. There. Let them make of that what they want.

“Yes?” Carien waits.

Oh yes. Hook and line. I look down at my hands. My fingers are curled up around each other, clinging to secrets. “I, it’s . . . .” I look up and catch her amber gaze, “complicated.”

The women have drawn closer, hemming me in. Carien hisses a pleased little laugh. “Oh now,” she says. “We’re friends. Nothing you say here will spread to other ears. We keep so many secrets. We victims of marriages must, after all, stick together.”

The women smile and nod, heads wavering like rinkhalses. “Come on,” they say in soothing hisses.

“It’s like this,” I begin, and take a deep fluttering breath. In truth, this is harder to do than I expected, perhaps because in my lies there is an element of truth that I must face. “I have – have touched it,” I whisper.

“So?” Carien leans back and observes me amusement.

Irritation sparks. She’s not letting me reel her in. “Well,” I say, and raise my hands in a helpless gesture. “You
know.
”

She’s tapping again, her eyes hooded as she waits. “Know what?”

Damn. Damn it all. “Perhaps, there is something,” I say, and hope that I can come back from this without condemning Jannik.

The women are all silent, exchanging glances. I tamp down my frustration and think again about Dash and Owen and death.
Guilt, guilt, guilt
. It’s awful, and I hold on to it fast. The guilt works in my favour – let them believe I am so disgusted with myself for touching Jannik. And that thought leads on to others, to the night I spent sleeping next to him, and how I could feel the magic rippling between us, feather soft. It seems so long ago. Funny how a matter of months can stretch out to fill enough longing for a lifetime.